


Drive By

by bethfrish



Category: Gattaca (1997)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-02-28
Updated: 2005-02-28
Packaged: 2018-02-21 12:07:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2467748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethfrish/pseuds/bethfrish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A dream is a wish your heart makes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drive By

Jerome has this recurring dream in which he tries to kill himself. But that's not out of the ordinary because he _did_ try to kill himself. 

Tried. Tried and failed. He thinks that if he went to a psychiatrist with his problem, the psychiatrist would just laugh and say, "Well of course you're having dreams about that. Do it properly the next time and I bet you anything they'll stop." 

The thing about his dreams is that they're always the same and yet nothing like what actually happened. He's in this big restricted area. The parking lot from hell. Full of angry orange cones and signs that scream "CAUTION" like his grandmother used to do when he'd cross the street with her. It's a maze of warnings and very distinct messages that all say You Should Not Be Here. Jerome doesn't even know where Here is, but that's the nature of dreams. You put yourself in a high school you never went to, a house you've never seen. He'd find it fascinating except that he's had this dream at least a hundred times and the unfamiliarity is beginning to bore him. 

Every time he finds himself in the midst of all these glaring warnings, alone, except for the forty-something cars that are threateningly revving their engines. Generic looking things, and unmemorably beige. The kind of cars you'd lose in parking lot. They're whizzing around him, knocking over cones and leaving heavy black tire marks over the squished plastic. The cones flop around, fly ten yards and land at Jerome's feet, dead and beaten, like he wants to be. 

Jerome isn't in his wheelchair in his dreams, but the cruel irony is that he can't move his legs anyway. He just stands there, frozen, feeling the wind against his face and in his hair as these beasts zoom in and out in patternless zigzags and skewed figure eights. He stands, helpless, in the middle of this chaos, breathing in the exhaust and squinting through the pollution and dust. 

They never hit him. 

Screeching tires going at forty-five miles an hour with faceless drivers threading the wheel through their fingers. Jerome watches, trembling, as they whiz behind him, making the hair prickle on the back of his neck. His left, his right, a foot and a half in front of his face. Never touching him. Never moving him at all. 

He wakes up in the middle of the night with Vincent lying naked next to him. Jerome turns slightly into the pillow, watching Vincent's smooth, pale back move steadily up and down, curve of his spine—his perfect, fully functional spine—visible above the thin sheet that's draped over them. 

He doesn't remember when he and Vincent started having sex. He thinks they were probably drunk. One morning he woke up with stains on his sheets, and when Vincent wouldn't look him in the eye at breakfast he only smirked and said, "People are under the assumption that paraplegics have to forfeit their sex lives. Now you can tell them that's quite the load of crap." 

Vincent is extremely good in bed, given the circumstances. He gives amazing blowjobs that Jerome is convinced would kill him if he didn't have the paralysis there to numb the effects. Jerome has been told by more than one person that he also gives amazing blowjobs. Vincent's never actually said as much, but Jerome has nail marks in his shoulders that he thinks speak for themselves. 

They don't always wake up together. Sometimes they jerk each other off and then Vincent slinks off to his room for the night, claiming he has to get up early and doesn't want to bother Jerome. Other times they fall asleep kissing lazily and stroking each other's hair, and when Jerome wakes up in the morning his arm is numb and Vincent has his head in the crook of his elbow. 

Sometimes they don't have sex at all. They'll eat dinner and Vincent will retreat to his room to do research, or Jerome will have too much wine and fall asleep in his chair an hour later. 

Then there are times when Vincent isn't even there. Jerome spends these nights reading quietly in his room, or drinking loudly in the hallway. They say that people who drink alone have problems with alcohol, but Jerome doesn't think that anyone who still has the use of his legs should be allowed to make blind judgments about someone who doesn't. He'll drink if he damn well wants to. 

It's on these nights, these Vincentless nights, that his dreams occur the most. A psychiatrist would probably tell him that he's depressed and lonely, and that the cars symbolize the people he can't get near. He would tell that psychiatrist to go fuck himself. 

Jerome wakes up after one of these dreams and watches Vincent as he sleeps. He reaches over and runs his fingertips over Vincent's shoulder, where the skin is smooth and hairless, and has a surprising amount of freckles that you'd never think were there unless you saw them yourself. 

Vincent stirs and rolls onto his back. Jerome glances down to where the sheet's slid down on Vincent's hips. He smiles at the sight. 

Vincent once asked him what he'll do when he's gone. "Masturbate a lot, I suppose," Jerome told him seriously. Vincent only frowned at him. "Come on. Really." Jerome narrowed his eyes. "I did have a life before you came along, you know." Vincent turned away and didn't say anything more. 

Jerome settles onto his back and closes his eyes, listening to Vincent breathe. He falls back into the same dream that he has over and over again. The cars race past him as he's rooted to the spot, never touching him, never moving him. 

One day he's going to figure out how to change it, how to finally make that sharp, painful contact. And then he'll have the one thing he wants most in the world. He'll die. 


End file.
